Christmas as a Carlson

 Every year Julie gets us matching Christmas pants...

I am an only child... an only child whose parents got divorced when I was 6.. So pretty much all i can remember is 4 different Christmas'. Mom, Dad, Grandma & Papa, and Mema & Pepa Christmas. Christmas was never really the same or filled with any annual traditions though. Their was never any real rules or a set way of doing things, it was just whatever fit in the schedule or worked best for the majority.... Oh but that beautiful Saturday on the 15th of April it all changed.... we are now entering....CHRISTMAS WITH THE CARLSON'S.

Let me just tell you that I could not have married in to a better family. Hands down, the best family. I thank God daily for blessing me with the Carlson's.
Now, having said that..I was not prepared for what was awaiting me that first Christmas. Kelly's mom has always been able to have all her (3) kids home for the holidays. Well this was one of those years where Christmas was on a Saturday, so there wasn't much time off, and Kelly's mom had just gone through to become a flight attendant, and she was stationed out of Houston. Bobby & Julie (my inlaws) are from AZ, Kurt and Kaylee (bro & sis-inlaw) live in Searcy, AR and go to HARDING UNIVERSITY, then we were in Dallas. So we all wanted to be with Bobby and Julie so to Houston we flew, by a Boeing 737 instead of the 8 tiny reindeer.
Well, the 4 carlson kids got to the airport by around 4 or 5, and B & J weren't due in until 11 or 12am, so then began the debacle of getting us home. We find this CRAZY cabbie guy who agrees to take us to our hotel. I will spare you all the conversations that we had with the cabbie, EXCEPT when the ONLY "attraction" he could point out to us was the triple X book-stores.
Next morning was Christmas Eve, we all spent the day at the Mall, in carlson style- doing Christmas shopping!! Finished it up with a Christmas Eve dinner at non other than.... The CheeseCake Factory!
We get back to the hotel with our stockings hung by the chimney with care, we we heard such a clatter, we all sprang to the room to see what was the matter.
Well Julie was called in to fly!! On Christmas morning.  So we improvised and opened our Christmas presents at 11 pm Christmas Eve.

The stocking is my Carlson stocking!

The tide to go, well we are just messy

the high five is because kelly & i are "team carlson"

and that... that is happy kaylee

The next morning we all decided that without her there we would rather just head home.. so we headed off to Dallas...
But, by the time we got home, it was dinner time and we realized that on our first Christmas together we didn't have any food in the house! We then proceeded to drive around Dallas for an hour only to settle on the only sensible choice for Christmas dinner.... IHOP other wise known as The International House of Pancakes! i can still remember what we ordered.. I got the the happy face pancakes with chocolate chips, and Kelly- the denver omelet.

Needless to say 4 year later we have had much better luck on being together and we are getting more and more traditions, but I will never forget my first Christmas as a Carlson